Update/WTO Globalizing Resistance in Cancún

...And one thing was certain: The collective resistance in Cancdin will continue to reverberate, not just in trade negotiations, but in international relations more broadly...

...If the WTO itself wants to survive, structural reforms will have to take place and the scope of the organization must be seriously reduced to matters of trade in the strictest sense of the word...

...Knowing that agriculture would be an uphill battle, some developing countries had organized into negotiating blocs in the run-up to the meeting...

...In the FTAA the most hotly contested issues are the same as those in the WTO: agriculture and investment...

...Trade Representative Robert Zoellick did not agree...

...The Singapore (or New) Issues, most energetically endorsed by the E.U., Canada and Japan, generally limit the ability of states to regulate foreign investment and companies...

...a footnote in agreements which largely ignore the developing world...

...Again, U.S...

...16 NACIA REPORT ON THE AMERICASUPDATE/WTO Police and protestors clash at a small opening in the barricades that prevented activists from reaching the site of the WTO meeting...

...Mercosur, the South American common market and its allies, could provide the kind of counterbalance that changed the dynamic at the WTO, not to mention the mass demonstrations planned in the streets...

...A weak Ministerial Declaration was passed that merely said negotiations would continue "with a renewed sense of urgency" at the Geneva headquarters and listed December 15 as the deadline "for concrete results...

...By the time Mexico's Foreign Secretary and WTO Ministerial Chairperson Luis Ernesto Derbez abruptly announced the end to the Conference on the final day, the negotiations were far beyond salvageable...

...As former European colonies, the ACP, for example, has the Cotonou Agreement with the E.U., which extends preferential trade arrangements-a guaranteed percentage of market share for a particular product or preferential tariffs-to all ACP states...

...Summing up the meeting, Brazilian Minister Amorin warned: "Development goals cannot be an afterthought in rules tailored to the needs of developed countries...

...But the strongest opposition to the WTO's "business as usual" attitude came not from the streets but from inside the conference walls...

...But the deal was largely cosmetic and according to Ellen 't Hoen of Doctors Without Borders, "[It] was designed to offer comfort to the U.S...

...The negotiating positions of both sides have been called too extreme...

...In his opening statement, Brazilian Foreign Minister Celso Amorin bluntly spelled it out: "[Subsidies] only generate dependency on the one side and deprivation on the other...

...This is especially the case since the proposed FTAA rules-like NAFTA's-are far more rigid and wider in scope than the WTO's...

...It's worth noting that many independent farmers across the NorthSouth divide oppose these massive subsidies since they mostly go to huge agribusiness corporations...

...Developing countries, especially those in the ACP-AULDC alliance, were practically unanimous in rejecting negotiations on these issues...

...Others were not as lucky...

...The G-22 proved to 16NACIA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS Teo Ballv is NACLA's associate editor and a contributing news editor for the Resource Center of the America's Connection to the Americas <wwwamericas.org...

...The Doha Declaration clearly stated that negotiations on the New Issues could only begin "on the basis of a decision to be taken by explicit consensus...

...Washington should take heed of the Brazilian Minister's words if it does not want the upcoming FTAA negotiations in Miami to share the fate of the talks in Cancdn...

...Capital controls prevent investments from rapidly entering and leaving a country-dubbed "hot money...

...Opposition by developing countries in the WTO had been building since the 2001 WTO Ministerial in Doha, Qatar, when at the eleventh hour of an unexpected fifth day, developing countries were practically forced to adopt a Ministerial Declaration they had absolutely no role in drafting...

...The clause was a last minute addendum included by the Ministerial Chairperson of Doha at the insistence of developing countries...

...negotiator reportedly jeered: "Create a larger demand for T-shirts...

...Unfortunately, it offers little comfort for poor patients...

...Such agreements are essential to ensure the gradual and successful integration of these extremely vulnerable countries to the multilateral trading system...

...Such preferences are often part of development strategies that reinvest state funds locally and encourage nascent or vulnerable sectors of the economy to grow...

...free trade agenda...

...This reasonable and relatively modest request was snubbed by the U.S...

...Chile and Malaysia used such controls to emerge relatively unscathed from the Mexican peso crisis in 1994 and the East Asian financial crisis in 1997, respectively...

...When the news of the collapse broke on the streets, a collective sigh of relief emanated from the weary protestors, followed by a celebratory yell of victory...

...Indonesian Trade Minister Rini Sumarno Soewandi responded angrily...

...So theoretically, if we read the WTO Vol XXXVII, No 3 NOVEMBEIIDECEMBER 2003 17 Vol XXXVII, No 3 NOVEMBERDECEMBER 2003 17UPDATE/WTO statutes properly, the weight of our proposal should be determinant in these negotiations...

...These countries obtain up to 80% of their export earnings from cotton...

...The concession sought to sidestep a potentially explosive issue at Canciin that could have stalled negotiations for days...

...The final two, competition policy and trade facilitation, propose onesize-fits-all prescriptions without flexibility for implementation according to local needs, funds or circumstances...

...And it is that country or group of countries that wants this round to fail...

...With the Southern countries now fortified, the negotiations stalled and the growing rift between North and South widened...

...Transparency in government procurement essentially means that governments would not be able to give preference to local firms or suppliers in awarding contracts for goods or services...

...A few globalif6bicos-as the protestors were called-blocked the rocks with "borrowed" police riot shields, and some were able to stop the rocks with their huge painted banners...

...intransigence on agricultural subsidies was especially frustrating for Latin American countries, which make up the bulk of the G-22, because Washington has repeatedly told Latin American trade negotiators that it only intends to discuss agriculture in the WTO and not in the context of the ongoing Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) negotiations...

...Argentine Foreign Minister Rafael Bielsa insisted that "agriculture must be at the center of [WTO] negotiations, because public opinion wants it there...

...Gerson commented that "they're the same issues and the same players that led to the collapse of the WTO talks, so there's no reason to think that those issues won't be just as divisive in the FTAA...

...Apparently, U.S...

...The issues are investment, transparency in government procurement, competition policy and trade facilitation...

...and their allies...

...Only two weeks before the meeting in Mexico, the WTO hastily paid lip service to continued criticism by developing countries and approved an agreement on easing access to cheap generic drugs so that poor nations could address public health crises and emergencies...

...Miami will be definitive in testing Latin American countries' commitments to opposing the U.S...

...Trade representatives from the Global South united against the trade agenda of the European Union and the United States (E.U.-U.S...

...Demonstrators and police in full riot gear exchanged blows with sticks and batons as large jagged chunks of pavement and rocks were being hurled at the police line...

...With the "drug deal" out of the way, developing countries focused on agriculture-particularly the estimated $300 billion a year in domestic support and export subsidies by rich countries that depress prices, diminish the export earnings of poor countries and prevent them from competing with the artificially cheap crops of the developed world...

...Any country," she said, "that tries to link the two issues [agriculture and the New Issues] is very selfish...

...The momentum is ours...

...The Singapore Issues marked the death knell of the Cancdn Ministerial...

...The WTO is a member-driven organization," noted the spokesperson of the newly formed alliance, "so today I am speaking to you on behalf of a majority of the membership of the WTO...

...plus Japan delegations and held firm to common positions on the most contentious issues, effectively blocking the agenda of the world's most powerful governments...

...trade policy, which on the one hand requires developing countries to open their markets while it pursues protectionism at home on the other...

...agenda...

...Once on the other side of the fence, they turned their backs to police and sat down in a symbolic act of nonviolent civil disobedience...

...It did not, for example, include any changes to current WTO rules, which the majority of member states agree were flawed from the very beginning, and it left open the continued expansion of rules into issues unrelated to trade...

...Public Citizen's FTAA Coordinator, Timi Gerson, believes "the collapse of the talks represent the rejection of a fundamentally antidemocratic trading system...

...The blame game for the collapse began even before the unceremonious end to the Ministerial...

...The Kenyan minister was the first to defiantly walk out of the final meeting...

...Trade Representative Robert Zoellick did not seem to agree...

...It all seemed very medieval: Two masses of heavily armored groups-police in their navy riot gear and protestors clad in an array of colorful helmets and makeshift padding with only their eyes showing behind bandanas-converging on a predetermined spot to battle it out...

...The declaration-titled by the WTO as the "Doha Development Agenda," and sarcastically referred to as the "Everything but Development Agenda" by developing nations-contained broad, ambiguous language that did not address developing countries' most serious concerns...

...Mark Ritchie of the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy echoed this sentiment: "The fact that now there is an actual negotiation taking place between a large majority of the countries of the WTO is an 18 NACIA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS 18 NACIA REPORT ON THE AMERICASUPDATE/WTO Graffiti art on a canvas provided by protestors in the heart of downtown Cancon: "Civil Disobedience...

...In Cancdn, delegates reported that the E.U., with the United States on board, was trying to link the New Issues with agriculture, making cuts in subsidies contingent on induced "explicit consensus...

...The Canctin meeting also demonstrates that the global trading system can in fact be multilateral, which is in itself a victory...

...The Cancin Ministerial was widely expected to be a "make it or break it" event for the WTO's future and for the course of multilateral trade negotiations...

...be the strongest counterbalance to the E.U.-U.S...

...Editorials and conservative media sources charge that the collapse of the talks spells doom for poor countries since the United States will now focus on bilateral or regional trade agreements like the recently signed free trade agreement with Chile or the FTAA...

...Critics of the NGOs pointed to their participation as fueling fires and "misguiding" representatives of the developing world...

...An agreement on investment would make capital controls illegal...

...As expected, thousands of protestors from around the globe descended on this Mexican Caribbean beach resort to oppose the corporate-led neoliberal globalization policies of the WTO...

...For the Southern negotiators and their allies, the African cotton initiative clearly demonstrated the hypocrisy inherent in U.S...

...And in the FTAA Washington will once again have to deal with fortified negotiating blocs...

...Like the G-22, this alliance focused on negotiating improved market access for agricultural goods, yet the group also had a distinct agricultural agenda that sought to protect preferential trade agreements...

...To everyone's surprise the projectiles were soon returned from the opposite direction...

...For five days they had tried and finally succeeded in breaking through the barricades...

...In the meeting's boldest agricultural initiative, the West and Central African nations of Benin, Burkina Faso, Chad and Mali proposed the immediate elimination of all subsidies on cotton...

...and the Western pharmaceutical industry...

...Global patent rules will continue to drive up the price of medicines...

...At this point, the Ministerial collapsed amid deadlock and outrage...

...Several trade representatives explained that it was inconceivable to expand the scope of WTO rules without first addressing previously unresolved issues...

...The alliance that brought together the largest number of countries was created by a pact among the African-CaribbeanPacific Group of States (ACP), the African Union (AU) and the Least Developed Countries (LDCs), comprising a total of 90 nations...

...Brazil along with China and India led the charge by creating what by the end of the meeting had become the Group of 22 (G-22), constituting half of the world's population and two-thirds of its farmers...

...The phrase was repeated everywhere: "Demands from the streets were finally brought to the Conference hall...

...Many have the severe disadvantages of being small developing island states, landlocked countries, highly indebted poor countries or countries in war or post-war situations, making preferential trade agreements all the more necessary...

...The level of solidarity and unity among developing countries in Canctn was historically unprecedented...

...When the news of the collapse spread through the Convention Center, NGO representatives jubilantly celebrated...

...The G-22 and the ACP-AULDC alliance may not have won the offensive battle they waged on behalf of their farmers, but they did win the defensive battle against beginning negotiations on the Singapore Issues...

...delegation...

...At the start of the talks one Caribbean delegate said he worried "not whether they can divide us or not, but rather, whether we can remain united...

...incredible, positive outcome of this meeting...

...They argued that subsidies by rich countries were destroying the livelihoods of millions of African farmers and impeding development in the region...

...In response to the proposal, one U.S...

...But the delegates of developing countries, who repeatedly affirmed, "no agreement is better than a bad agreement," were the only ones who could confidently declare victory...

...U.S...

...They did...

...They resisted incredible pressure, strong-arming and outright bribery by the E.U.-U.S...

...The initiative was primarily aimed at the United States, which subsidizes its cotton growers with $4 billion annually-more than the combined value of the four African nations' entire cotton production...